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Jocelyn Chang
A champion of harp and new music, participates in festivals, conferences, workshops, and concerts, working directly with composers to perform their music for all types of audiences. She has commissioned and premiered many works for harp by composers from all over North America, Europe, and Taiwan, where she founded the harp department at the Chinese Cultural University and taught full-time from 1977-1981. The leader in the exploration of a revolutionary new invention, the Dilling harp, she has commissioned and premiered over 70 works expressly for this instrument, either solo or in combination with other instruments or choir.
Jocelyn is principal harpist and a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Her talent for improvisation has been showcased in collaborations in music, dance, theater, poetry, visual art, sculpture and performance art. She has performed on radio and television in the U.S., Romania and Bulgaria, and appears on over two dozen CDs and videos. Her harp/flute duo with composer/flutist Michael Leese gives over 100 performances a year in venues ranging from experimental theater to corporate dinner parties, concert series, and worship services.
A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and Cleveland State University, she currently teaches at CSU, Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory, Kent State University, Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland Music School Settlement and Beck Center for the Arts. She has conducted workshops on improvisation in Cleveland, San Diego, Hartford and Berlin, and has given master-classes for performance in Bulgaria and China. She and Michael Leese are co-directors of the Jocelyn Chang Harp Ensemble which is in residence at the Beck Center for the Arts.